


my hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me

by glitteratiglue



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 18:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5101739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re too afraid of being caught, of disrupting the delicate balance they have, where they can play at being best friends while stealing careful, all-too-brief kisses in rare moments alone.</p><p>(Three kisses that defined Steve and Bucky.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	my hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marshmallowdeviant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marshmallowdeviant/gifts).



> The product of Dashboard Confessional and my feelings. Title by the aforementioned band.
> 
> For **marshmallowdeviant** , who shares my appreciation for Steve and Bucky pining over each other like idiots.

**1.**

Steve’s used to wanting what he can’t have.

Growing up weak and sickly, he's well-versed in disappointment from an early age: never being picked by the neighbourhood boys for baseball games, friends drifting away whenever he comes back to school after a bout of illness, girls looking at him like he’s something they’ve stepped in on the sidewalk. When he was little, Steve would press his face into the pillow and wish for all the things he wanted: good health, for his ma not to be sick anymore (Sarah Rogers tried to hide the way she coughed at night, but Steve always heard anyway, feeling sick with terror), but most of all, for just one friend who didn’t look at him like he was fragile, easily broken.

He gets one of those wishes, at least: Bucky. The second that Bucky sticks out a hand and pulls Steve out of the dirt, fresh from a fight with the O’Donnell brothers, Steve feels like someone believes in him. Bucky doesn’t treat him with kid gloves, or make excuses for him. He can give as good as he gets in an argument, and will gladly tell Steve when he thinks he’s being a jerk (Bucky’s kind of a jerk, too, so Steve thinks they fit together quite well).

From the time they’re around eight, Steve starts to notice all the things Bucky has that he doesn’t — his easy charm that makes people gravitate to his side; his laughter, bright as sunshine; his ability to shrug off sadness like it’s a drop of water rolling off his back. Steve could easily hate Bucky for those things, but he doesn't: Bucky’s his best friend, who sticks by him even when nobody else does, and Steve never forgets it.

Years pass, and it gets a little tougher for Steve not to begrudge Bucky for what he has when Bucky grows taller, fills out and starts drawing the attention of girls. Inexplicably, he still sticks by Steve. Steve can never figure that one out, but he’ll take it, because Bucky is the one good thing Steve has in a world where everyone else ignores him.

There are so many times when Bucky could be out having fun — playing ball or smoking in back alleys with the other boys, making out with Sally Kaminski behind the automat — and instead, he chooses to sit with Steve by his sickbed, trying to make him laugh while Steve hacks up a lung into a handkerchief.

It gets hard for Steve not to feel like he’s dragging Bucky down, and sometimes he says so.

“You’re stuck with me, jerk,” Bucky always tells him, and digs Steve in the ribs. It makes Steve feel warm inside whenever Bucky says it, though he knows it probably shouldn’t; Bucky’s his friend, not a dame he wants to make time with (not that dames ever want to make time with Steve).

Steve often wonders what Bucky wants with him — an angry, skinny little punk with a chip on his shoulder — and as the years pass, Steve only gets angrier. He starts picking fights with the local boys, putting his scrawny fists and sharp bones in the way of their kicks and punches. Along the way, Steve gets pretty good at fighting, though he hasn’t got the strength to back it up. Often, Bucky’s there to get him out of the skirmishes; sometimes Steve thinks that's why he fights, just to know that Bucky will be there when he needs him.

One hot July afternoon, Steve comes home with bruises and a split lip, and his ma yells at the pair of them (because Bucky always goes with him; he’ll never leave Steve to face the music alone).

“I’d expect this from Steve, but not you, Bucky. You’ve got a bit of sense in your head, unlike my son,” Sarah Rogers says, the lines at the corners of her mouth taut.

Bucky takes the telling-off with good grace, face red and eyes fixed on the floor — like he isn’t going to get another strip torn off him the second his own ma sees him — but Steve is sure the words are falling on deaf ears. The next time he gets in a fight, he knows Bucky will step up to defend him, because he always does.

Steve always feels terrible about getting Bucky into trouble — though, half the time, Bucky is the one who gets them into the fights with his smart mouth; he can never ignore it when people are mean to Steve.  As a result, Steve starts picking fights when Bucky isn’t around, when he’s out with one of his many girls. Usually, Bucky still gets to hear about the fights, and will come over and patch Steve up while muttering under his breath what a damn idiot his best friend is.

When they’re seventeen, after Steve throws his fifth job interview in a week, he gets in over his head with one of the local bullies and ends up with a busted nose for his trouble.

Bucky comes over after his shift at the pencil factory, and shakes his head as soon as he sees Steve, sitting on the couch, covered in blood. He goes to get the cotton balls and iodine. It’s a familiar dance, Steve letting Bucky daub the blood off his face and clean up his wounds (Steve’s mother works long nursing shifts at the hospital, and he doesn’t want to add to her worries; it’s easier for Steve to let Bucky deal with him after fights).

“One of these days, you’re gonna get yourself killed, you moron,” Bucky says.

Steve’s shirt has red streaks down the front of it from the nosebleed he’s been trying to staunch with a washcloth. Bucky reaches for the cloth and puts firm pressure on it. Steve whimpers from the pain, but the bleeding stops quickly. He's grateful, both for Bucky's gentle touch and the way he always takes care of him.

Still, Steve huffs when he says, “You didn’t hear how Gary Renner was talking to this girl, Buck. He was sayin' things you shouldn’t ever say to a lady.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I can imagine, okay?” He huffs out a breath and dips a cotton ball in the iodine, pressing it to the broken skin; Steve hisses at the sharp sting. “Just —why has it always gotta be you, Steve? It’s like if there’s a sniff of trouble, you find it.”

Steve’s nose is stinging from the punch, but he has enough fight still in him to wrestle out of Bucky’s grasp. “I guess I ain’t got much sense in my head. I’m just your idiot best friend, after all.” He’s shaking with anger, and has to look away, anywhere but at Bucky.

He feels Bucky’s warm hand on his chin, fingers curving softly against his skin. “Hey,” Bucky says. “No. It’s not that. You’re worth ten of guys like Gary, got more sense in your head than the lot of those idiots put together. But what if it goes too far one day, and you get your head cracked in? What am I gonna do then?”

Finally, Steve turns his head. Bucky’s eyes are wide; he looks terrified. Another hand comes up to touch the other side of Steve’s face, so Bucky has his chin cupped in his hands.

Without knowing why he’s doing it, Steve closes his eyes; his heartbeat is hammering in his chest. The couch squeaks as the warmth of Bucky moves closer. Steve still doesn’t open his eyes. Bucky smells faintly of graphite dust from pencil nibs in the factory, and his breath is hot and stale against Steve’s mouth when he leans in.

Then Steve feels the soft press of Bucky’s lips against his, and his world explodes: colour blooms behind his eyelids, and his whole body feels like it's on fire. He pants and reaches up to grab a handful of Bucky’s shirt and pull him closer. Bucky slides his tongue into Steve’s mouth, deepening the kiss until it becomes wetter, messier. Bucky’s face is pressing into his injured nose and it hurts a little, but Steve hardly cares, not when the kiss feels this good.

Bucky pulls back, a trail of saliva hanging between their lips before it falls, and exhales a shaky breath.

Steve wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips are tingling and he can feel his dick, impossibly hard and straining at the seam of his pants; he shifts uncomfortably, hoping Bucky hasn’t noticed.

“Uh,” Bucky says faintly. “Thought you might need something to take your mind off the pain.”

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve says, in a hoarse voice he barely recognises. “Think it works.” He forces himself to smile, and Bucky smiles back, some of the tension dissipating from the room.

Bucky reaches for the forgotten cotton ball and goes back to cleaning the blood off Steve’s face like nothing’s happened, but he makes sure to avoid Steve’s eye while he does it. Steve sits there, nose and lips smarting, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

The kiss certainly takes Steve’s mind off the pain, but it doesn’t do much for the other, secret feelings inside him: the ones he pretends not to have except on cold, lonely nights in his bedroom, when he imagines touching Bucky, running his hands all over him and drawing soft, broken sounds from his throat.

That's the first time, but not the only time Bucky kisses him; there are other moments when he pushes his mouth to Steve’s and makes him forget how they’re supposed to be just friends. It doesn’t happen often, and when it does, it’s usually nothing more than a drunken, affectionate press of lips, Bucky’s mouth wet and sloppy on Steve’s. It never goes any further; they’re too careful and too afraid to do anything more (or maybe Bucky doesn’t want to, but Steve doesn’t like to think about that).

There are still plenty of girls on Bucky's arm, and all the disastrous double dates he sets up for the two of them. In the end, they’re too busy to think about it most of the time.

But there are other times when Bucky kisses Steve desperately, passionately, like he _wants_ him.

After Steve’s mother dies, when they’re on the couch cushions on the floor and Steve is crying his eyes out, Bucky pulls him close and kisses and kisses him, until Steve stops sobbing and melts against him instead, shamelessly seeking any comfort Bucky can give.

The winter of 1940, Steve gets sick enough to warrant a hospital stay. Bucky canes the overtime to pay the bill and along with the money from Steve’s poster drafting job, it’s enough, thank God, but he doesn’t have much time to visit, and Steve misses him like crazy. When Steve finally comes home, Bucky kisses him with a fierceness that makes his weakened body feel faint all over again, and breathes against his hair, “Thought I was gonna lose you, Steve. That’s what they said, before the fever broke.”

Then comes Pearl Harbor, the draft slip with Bucky’s name on, and the start of the widening gulf between them. It doesn’t happen anymore after that.

Sometimes Steve thinks he dreamt it.

 

**2.**

Before he became Captain America, Steve’s worst fear was death.

In the damp, cold apartment he shared with Bucky, Steve would lie awake a lot of nights, thinking about how one day he’d probably have a bad asthma attack and croak that way, or he’d get overconfident in a back alley scrap and end up with a smashed-in skull, like Bucky had said to him once. It was the understandable fear of any kid who’d grown up sick, who’d watched their mother die a slow, choking death from tuberculosis — Steve knew he wasn’t special in that, but it still scared him out of his wits, the idea that he might die before he’d really lived: before he’d seen the world, before he’d even made it with a dame (not that Steve really thought about dames all that much; it was usually Bucky who occupied his heated, night-time dreams).

Then Steve went to war, and learned there were other things to be afraid of. While he toured the country doing USO shows, reading out his war bond schpiel to captive audiences, all he could think about was Bucky, face-down in some ditch in Europe with a body full of bullet holes. Some nights, Steve would jolt awake with those images fresh in his brain and tears on his cheeks, only to hear a grumble from Andrews in the bunk above (Andrews played Hitler in the shows, and though Steve had punched him out over two hundred times, they weren’t particularly friendly).

When Steve heard Bucky was missing in action, it felt like the punch to the gut he’d been anticipating all along. After all, he’d already been gifted with this new body, a new strength and fitness he’d never dreamed of before, and Steve knew by then he never got everything he wanted. Something had to give. He just didn’t expect it would be Bucky; finding and saving him feels like a lucky strike Steve’s sure he’s going to somehow pay for later.

But he can’t think about that now, not when he has Bucky back, against all reasonable odds.

After the doctors have checked Bucky over, Steve hauls him off to his tent, insisting he needs rest, and Bucky’s too exhausted to resist. As soon as they’re inside, Steve lies back on the bedroll, pulls Bucky against his chest — dimly, Steve notes how weird it feels, to be big enough to wrap himself around Bucky — and pretends not to notice the way Bucky is shaking against him. He strokes his hair and feels Bucky pass into sleep almost instantly; it isn’t long before Steve follows him.

It’s still dark when Steve wakes, Bucky a heavy, comforting weight on his chest.

Bucky stirs in his arms. “Steve,” he murmurs. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says, reaching down to run a hand through Bucky’s messy hair. “It’s really me. I’m here, and I ain’t leaving.”

Momentarily, Steve remembers Peggy, and perhaps this isn’t right — having Bucky close to him like this — when she exists. But then, it’s not as he and Peggy have made each other any promises beyond flirtatious smiles and teasing glances. With that thought, Steve manages to put Peggy out of his mind, at least for now.

“Said you were stuck with me, didn’t I?” Bucky shifts and turns over so he’s facing Steve, fixing sleep-soft eyes on his face.

Steve’s breathing hitches, warmth curling around the base of his spine from the way Bucky’s looking at him. Bucky spreads out a hand on his chest to get the leverage to pull himself up, and then his face is right against Steve’s, their foreheads pressed together.

He leans in and kisses Steve; it’s slow and sweet at first — like Bucky just wants to breathe him in, make sure he’s really here — but it quickly becomes heated, Steve pulling Bucky closer with a hand on the small of his back, and Bucky’s teeth nipping at Steve’s lower lip in a way that burns him under his skin. When Bucky tilts his head up to deepen the kiss, Steve can’t help but think of all the times they kissed before the war, when he was the one who had to stretch up to reach Bucky — it’s a strange thought, but what hasn’t changed is the way he feels when Bucky kisses him: alive and _real_ (and slightly dizzy).

Bucky is breathing heavily into the crook of Steve’s neck, and Steve can feel him hard through his uniform, the outline of his cock pressing into Steve’s belly. But it doesn’t seem like the right moment, not when Bucky’s just been cleared by the camp doctors. The last thing Steve wants to do is take advantage of him.

Steve moves to pull away, but Bucky grabs his wrists.

“Stay. Please,” he whispers, low and wrecked. “It’s not about that, Steve, I know you don’t want to. I just need you, okay?” Bucky ducks his head, embarrassed.

“Believe me, I _do_ want to,” Steve says, addressing the unspoken question hanging in the air. He glances down to where he’s obviously hard and straining against his pants, as if to make his point more obvious. Bucky follows his gaze, and laughs shakily when he sees. “Just want to make sure you know what you’re getting into.”

It’s not as if Steve has to say it to Bucky, because he knows as well as he does the consequences if they were ever caught: war board hearings, a blue discharge for them both, the humiliation of everyone around them knowing. Maybe even a public outcry.

“I believe you,” Bucky says. “Look, I get it. Last thing I want is Captain America hauled over the coals for being queer. But when no-one’s watching, we’ve got this. It’s gotta be enough, for now.”

There’s one more kiss, messy and breathless. Bucky’s mouth is hard and hot on his, a promise of everything he’ll do to Steve when they have the kind of time and privacy you can’t find in the middle of a war zone.

Steve’s used to wanting what he can’t have (Bucky, mostly), and he’s used to not getting what he wants — he couldn’t save his mother, wasn’t quick enough to stop the HYDRA assassin killing poor Dr Erskine, had to go to war in a pair of tights — but this time, he hopes things will be different.

Over the next few months with the Commandos, Steve keeps his dream close, longing for the day he and Bucky can be together the way they want to be. Outwardly, Steve smiles and keeps it professional, claps a hand on Bucky’s shoulder while wishing he could slam him up against the wall, roll down his fatigues and put his mouth on Bucky’s cock until he falls apart. A lot of nights, Steve has to silently touch himself in his sleeping bag and bite his tongue when he comes. He has a sneaking suspicion Bucky is probably doing the same.

It seems ridiculous, but they’re too afraid of being caught, of disrupting the delicate balance they have, where they can play at being best friends while stealing careful, all-too-brief kisses in rare moments alone. The closest they ever get is kissing and rubbing up against each other until they both come in their pants. Steve wants more than that, of course he does, but it still feels amazing, more than he deserves.

Their missions are going well. The Commandos are backing HYDRA further into a corner with every victory, and Steve can almost taste the end of the war, can imagine a future where he and Bucky get to go home. He starts to think he might finally get to have what he wants, that maybe, this time, luck will be on his side.

The day Bucky falls, Steve is reminded how he isn’t supposed to get what he wants. He thinks he should have seen this coming.

 

**3.**

_2015_

Steve never dreamed he’d get back Bucky back, not for one second. Having Bucky not only alive, but living in his apartment is a gift Steve can never fully express gratitude for — still, he tries his best.

Bucky is working on putting the broken pieces of himself back together. It isn’t easy — Steve has read the Winter Soldier file several times over, had nightmares over its contents, but he wasn’t the one who _lived_ it —  but Bucky's getting there, day by day: he goes for runs with Sam, has coffee with Natasha, lets Tony tinker with his arm and make a few upgrades; he smiles at Steve and tells him things he’s started to remember about their old life. Steve tries to give Bucky the space to find himself. He watches and waits, and feels like his heart will break under the weight of his admiration and love for Bucky.

These days, Steve has almost everything he wants: good friends, a home and, well — not exactly a steady job, but one that pays the bills. It should be enough, but it isn’t, because he doesn’t have Bucky — at least, not in the way he wants him. Bucky seems to have recovered a lot of his memories from before, but he’s never mentioned the promises they made to each other long ago: not their stupid, teenage makeouts, or the more desperate way they kissed during the war.

Steve isn’t sure Bucky remembers any of it. He tries to put it out of his mind, tells himself it’s enough to have Bucky, to have his friend back.

Ten months after Bucky comes home, Steve wakes to a warm body sliding into bed beside him.

It’s familiar in the best way — though Bucky has his own room and a bed with a thousand thread-count sheets, sometimes he can’t sleep, or he’s plagued with nightmares, and it’s then he’ll squeeze into Steve’s bed, the way he used to during the war on cold nights — and Steve presses into the touch, breathes in the scent of soap and sweat and _Bucky._ It has the unfortunate side effect of making Steve hard as a rock; he’s glad Bucky can’t feel that, being on the other side of him.

“Hey,” Bucky murmurs in his ear, stroking a hand lazily over Steve’s forearm.

Steve’s eyes snap open. Normally, Bucky does this in the middle of the night, but it’s the morning. Light is streaming through the gap in the heavy blackout curtains, casting a thin glow onto the centre of the bed.

“Hey,” Steve replies, wondering why his throat feels like it’s closing up. A hand pushes at his shoulder, and he turns over to face Bucky, still uncomfortably aware of the fact he’s stiff as a board, straining against his sweatpants.

There’s a mischievous smile playing on Bucky’s lips. “Remembered something else,” he says, his blue eyes sharp and intent as they search Steve’s face.

Steve can’t breathe; his mouth is dry, and not just from the general grossness of waking up.

Then Bucky leans in and kisses Steve, graceless and hungry, like he’s been waiting to do it. Their mouths fit together, hot and wet and perfect, as if it hasn’t been more than seventy years since they last did this. Steve loses himself in Bucky’s kiss, gets one hand on the nape of his neck and the other in his long, tangled hair. Bucky pushes his hands under Steve’s shirt, tracing patterns on his back that make Steve shiver.

“Oh. That,” Steve says after a while, feeling like he’s taken a hard knock to the skull — and that’s one thing that hasn’t changed; Bucky’s kisses still make Steve feel like he’s spinning, floating away out of his own body.

Bucky laughs, but a second later, his expression turns businesslike. “Now, I seem to remember there were all these things we wanted to do, when we had the time to do 'em. When we didn’t have to be scared.”

Something in Steve’s chest clenches at that — because they don’t have to be scared anymore; in this century, nobody’s going to lock them up for loving each other — and before he can stop himself, he’s hauling Bucky in with a fistful of his t-shirt for another messy, needy kiss.

“So, where do we start?” Bucky asks when they break apart, his voice rough and low.

“I’ve got a few ideas.” Steve grins and presses Bucky back into the pillows, rucks Bucky's shirt up and starts to kiss a heated trail down his body. 

This time, they’re both getting what they want. Steve no longer cares whether he’s supposed to have this. He’ll take it, because Bucky’s the only one he’s ever wanted, the one person who completes him.

Maybe it's taken decades and ice and pain for them to get here, but Steve plans on loving Bucky for the rest of his life. That’s a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Can also be found on [tumblr](http://glitteratiglue.tumblr.com), if you want to cry with me over the perfection that is Steve and Bucky.


End file.
